Are most blogs boring?

I said over at JT's blog today that most blogs are boring. Is that a slam, or if that a mere fact?

Judge for yourself. There are more than 112.8 million blogs in existence today (in English, per Technorati; there are allegedly 72 million blogs in addition to that in Chinese, but most of you don't read Chinese, so that's not a relevant fact)

112.8 million blogs. Now, seriously: my blog has a faithful following of about 300 readers and 100 linkers -- and that puts me in the top 5% of all blogs. If you do all the math there, that means that if I am at the very bottom of the top 5%, 107,160,000 blogs have fewer readers than I do.

With that point in mind, consider a second point: how many blogs do you actually read? I glance at all the blogs in my blogroll about twice a month, but on a daily basis I read about 6 blogs -- two of which I write (unless you count the meta). Anybody actually read more than a dozen blogs a day?

The question "why?" then has to be answered, and the obvious first "why?" is that you only have so much time. Right? I have 15 minutes a day to catch up on things, and that means I can only read so much. But the other ridiculously-obvious answer is, "and these are the only blogs I can stomach or that can hold my attention."

If there were more blogs which you found interesting, you'd get them on your RSS or something. Subscribe to updates and read later. But you don't -- because most blogs are -boring-. YAWN!

That said, the take-away here is not, "stir up more controversy to get more readers" -- because that approach to blogging is, in fact, disreputable. Michelle Malkin blogs like that; the watchblogging community blogs like that (gut check: when was the last time any of them blogged about something positive they enjoyed?); don't you go and blog like that. But what you can do is learn to write better prose. You could write better prose, you know: you just have to read a little and write a little more.

I was on the phone with somebody yesterday, and he said something I think the rest of you should think about. He said that he's always surprised to meet most bloggers because they are -nothing- like the blog they write. His meaning was that most bloggers are a lot more interesting in person than they are on their blog.

Isn't that a shame? Well, shame on us, people. Blog better -- it is actually in you to do so.